EHR (electronic health record)
Also called electronic health record.
A digital record of a patient's health and care that is built to be shared with other providers, so it can follow the patient.
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What it is.
An EHR holds diagnoses, medications, allergies, lab results, visit notes and more. What sets it apart from an EMR is sharing: the US health IT agency ONC describes EHRs as designed to share information with other providers, while an EMR mostly stays inside one practice.
In everyday speech, the large clinical systems hospitals run are called EHRs, and new products usually connect to them rather than replace them. That connection is done with standards such as HL7 messages and FHIR APIs.
Why it matters
Almost every clinical product, from telehealth to remote monitoring, has to read from or write to an EHR. How you integrate decides cost, timeline and which customers you can sell to. EHR data is also PHI in most US settings, so the HIPAA work comes with it.
In a product build
We scope EHR integration as its own workstream: which EHRs, which data, read or write, and which interface each one offers. We build behind an adapter so a second EHR does not mean rewriting the product, and test with each vendor's sandbox before go-live.
Common mistakes.
- 01
Assuming every EHR exposes the same API. Coverage and access rules vary a lot.
- 02
Leaving integration to the end. Vendor approvals and testing can take months.
- 03
Copying more EHR data than the feature needs, which grows the privacy risk.
Read the official text.
Primary sources this definition is based on.
- HealthIT.gov (ONC), EMR vs EHR: what is the difference?checked 2026-10-25
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Related terms.
- EMR (electronic medical record)The digital version of a clinician's paper chart: a patient's medical and treatment history kept within one practice.
- FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources)A standard from HL7 for exchanging health data through modern web APIs, built from small, defined pieces called resources.
- HL7 (Health Level Seven)The standards body behind major health data standards, and the common name for its Version 2 messages that hospital systems use to exchange data.
- PHI (protected health information)Health information that can identify a person and is created or held by a HIPAA covered entity or its business associate.
- BAA (business associate agreement)The contract HIPAA requires between a covered entity and a vendor that creates, receives, keeps or sends its PHI.
